New Rules, always up for debate

New Rules

I'm sticking Elo, Glicko, Glicko-2 in as rank options but the ranking system I've been using all along, Schoolyard ranking, 2 points exchanged on game over if ranks aren't already allotted according to the game's result - can do reversible time-outs, where those can't. So every six hours (a setting) online player's control loop checks for timed-out games over 10 days old (also a setting), timing those games out with an auto-forced-timed-out-win-loss event that affects the ranks but reversibly - that's been great - it keeps one from being able to sit on losing games to amass wins to climb rank artificially. The mainstream ranking methodologies don't have this ability so I've gone back and forth and back and forth and back and forth on what to do about this, but I think I figured it out - other sites kill the game, delete it, I've read - I propose we make it so those ranks do collapse into a game-over on timeout, but in this case, permanently, but leave the game open for continued play, if desired, but only for fun or education, never again for rank climbing once timed out - I think that's more than fair considering if they really wanted to climb rank they'd be climbing rank not letting games sit, right.

So, new rule: Elo, Glicko, Glicko-2 ranks default to game-over after game-timeout, currently set to ten days. SY will remain behaving as it always has.

To remind everyone, there's a display filter. The default filter is a stepped-timeout on top of the ranks. Absent players are stepped down per step times listed in settings, currently three minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 180 minutes, 24 hrs, 3 days, 10 days, 1 month, 6 months, 1 yr, 5 yrs, infinity, so anyone in first place is necessarily in the top time tier as well, and in addition, this is a view setting which can be turned off by selecting to view 'pure' ranks, which are the underlying actual ranks without timing considered - that's not to say active games hadn't been timed-out/auto-lost, the timing nuances are separate from each other.

In addition as a reminder all info is available on profile pages, pure and timed ranks, of all variants.

I'm not saying it works like this as published, just yet - I'm saying that - it's just about to - stand by . . .